1. Field of the Invention
The invention related to a flushly mounted bumper strip fitted into a cut-out portion of a vertical exterior door edge of a motor vehicle.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
It has been a problem in the prior art to prevent damage in the nature of scrapes and so-called “dings” to closely parked cars when a driver and passengers exit their motor vehicles by opening the doors. Often an edge of a door of the vehicle being exited sustains a scratch when the door hits a wall in a parking garage.
One apparatus for solving this problem was disclosed by this inventor in his earlier U.S. Pat. No. 4,839,991 which was issued on Jun. 20, 1989, for a “Retractable Guard for Motor Vehicle Doors”. Disadvantages of this initial attempt to solve the problem were that the apparatus was a large, bulky, ugly protruding rubber device which had complicated moving parts and was expensive to manufacture.
Other earlier and later inventors have also tackled the same problem with little or no commercial success. Many of the patented inventions are either aesthetically unpleasing or do not conform to the contours of the vehicle so that more drag is produced, thus lowering fuel efficiency. Examples of these types of inventions and other inventions patented and located during a preliminary patentability search are discussed briefly below.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,570,383 was issued to Adell on Feb. 18, 1986, and provides a teaching of forming a recess-depressed region inwardly from a car door surface to accept a door edge guard having a thickness corresponding to the recess depth. See in particular the embodiments of FIGS. 6 and 7 and the language of col. 4 beginning at line 14 to line 36. Adell also describes using colored plastics so that the color of the outer guard matches the color of the vehicle door in order to promote the appearance of flushness between the guard and the car door. See also Adell's later U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,762 which was issued on May 13, 1986 and his much later U.S. Pat. No. 4,998,380 which was issued on Mar. 12, 1991.
Schotthoefer discloses in his U.S. Pat. No. 5,083,399, which was issued on Jan. 28, 1992, the use of matched-color, polyvinylflouride (PVF) material for door guards. In his earlier U.S. Pat. No. 5,062,665 which was issued on Nov. 5, 1991, Schotthoefer discloses the use of double-sided adhesive tape to affix a guard to a car door.
The earliest attempt to solve this problem in the prior art appears to have been made by Fischer in his German Patent Application No. 1 954 088 which was published on May 6, 1971. Fischer provided motor car door protection where the edge meets a bottom corner of the door which opens outwardly. The edge and/or the bottom corner were covered by an elastic material, i.e. rubber or plastic. Thus, these two sections of the door were produced from rubber or plastic instead of metal. Unfortunately, no drawings were provided by the sole inventor who filed his own application.
Another sole inventor working on this problem in the prior art is Mantegazza who filed an application which was printed as Publication No. US 2002/0108314 A1 on Aug. 15, 2002. The invention was entitled “Impact-Protection Profile for Automobiles”. The profile was made of plastoferrite so that it could be applied directly at an edge of a metal sheet forming the outer car body without the interposition of additional materials, such as glues, adhesive tapes and the like. The application was abandoned on Sep. 22, 2003.
Despite the advances made by these prior art devices in solving the problem, none of them, including the recessed mounts of Adell, allow for flexure or shock absorption by the devices themselves. Therefore, they do not protect against dings to doors being impacted. They are merely guards which address the problem from the standpoint of the offending car and the edge of its swinging door. Although they claim to protect other objects, this inventor cannot see how they do, in particular the flushly mounted guards of Adell.
Thus, it remains a problem in the prior art to prevent dings absolutely against the sides of impacted motor vehicles which are parked next to the offending car door.